Sunday, November 30, 2014

“We
saw two common use cases in the old Foursquare App that are best encapsulated
in the night of a New Yorker. For dinner, you look for a place that matches
your taste, and afterwards you look for a bar where your friends are. In less
than two percent of App opens did we see those two behaviors overlap. No one
was saying, ‘I’m in the mood for chili, I wonder which of my friends are
getting chili right now.'”

Check-ins
are now down with the Swarm App, that now has new and improved features that Foursquare users will love. Meanwhile Foursquare has separated to basically become
a recommendation service to compete against Yelp, much to the dismay of long-time
aficionados of Foursquare as noted in the
article “Fly Or
Die: The New Foursquare”, published Aug 12, 2014 by Jordan Crook, TechCrunch.

The
Neighbourhoods features makes it possible for you to go into stealth mode by
swiping from left-to-right across your avatar and location. Orange for active,
grey for invisible to your friends; very simple!

That
said, Swarm has also fixed the Mayor-for-life debacle by making a mayorship something
that's shared among friends. No more Mayors for life; that honour is dependent
of you actually frequenting the place the most, making the gamification of Foursquare a more friend-centric affair.

They're
also killed the Badges and replaced them with stickers, which you unlock by
checking. Probably you never did check in before on the older Foursquare App, but the process is the same in
Swarm; tap once to check in and be told where you are, with the second tap
confirming your location.

Feeds
are now the thing and there are four of them. You have one that's basically
like a Targeting range finder to tell you how close your Friends are, kinds
like Radar. Handy if you wanna sponge on a friend for a cup of Expresso.

For
the nostalgic for the old days of Foursquare
comes the Chronological list of your friends activities so you can known who
best to bother. The reverse is with the Plans feed; you post what you're up to
in that feed. Finally a bit of familiarity with Facebook with a feed for likes,
comments and Friends Requests rounds out the lot.

Next
feed is the familiar chronological list of friend activity. Plans, which is
something I'll cover more of in just a minute, is where you can broadcast what
you're up to, and ask friends to join you. The last tab is where you'll find
notifications of likes, comments, and friend requests.

The
Foursquare App tries to determine you
actually taste in food by hitting you with a survey the minute you launch the App
for the first time as noted in the article “This Is the
new Foursquare”, published Aug 6, 2014 by Jordan Crook, Techcrunch. It then starts recommend you to
restaurants that it has listed based on your tastes and not where your friends
have been.

Apparently
what you like to eat and the fact that your friend might like it are mutually exclusive
concepts; hence the reason why Foursquare
management felt a split into two Apps was necessary.

Foursquare follows the recommendation of an
army of Restaurant connoisseurs from TimeOut, the Washington Post, the New York
Times and yes, your friends…on Foursquare,
who you can follow if they give great reviews. You soon learn why a place is
good or bad instead of being greeted with Tales from the Crypt like Yelp.

Foursquare review section reminds me of Twitter as you're
only got a few characters to really can a Restaurant, making the possibility of
bumping into long-winded narratives about bad food and dirty waiter as is the
case on Yelp very unlikely.

Foursquare, in competing against Yelp, present’s
Yelp-ish behavior by its members even as Swarm has basically evolved into what Foursquare
should have been.

90%
of former Foursquare users agree; they're actively checking in again, according
to VP of Product Experience, Jon Steinback, who also hinted at game-centric
future for Swarm, quote: “With the old gamified system, only a few people could
actually win. We want to reinvent the game mechanics to make them more
relevant. We’re thinking about stickers and interesting ways to compete with
friends instead of the whole network, which means that our plans around
gamification in Swarm won’t include points or mayorships.”

After
all, your friend may not like you taste in Restaurants and aren't like to join
you. But you can still Swarm with them after you're girlfriend have parted ways
for the evening for a night on the town in New York, when the real beat comes alive!

In
the first sign that eye-gaze technology has practical application, Pizza Hut
has rolled out a new menu that employs eye-tracking technology to help you make
up your mind as to what you want to order as toppings as noted in the article “Pizza
Hut's crazy new menu lets you order with your mind”, published 28 Nov 2014
7:00AM GMT By Leah Hyslop, the UK
Telegraph.

Dominoes
Pizza, their arch-enemy in the Pizza Delivery game, had recently launched an App
and Webpage that allows you to track the delivery of your Pizza much as you
would do a package, albeit it's not really accurate as noted in the article “Is
the Domino's Pizza Tracker Telling the Truth?”, published 10/07/14 10:18am
by Joel Montgomery - Quora, Gizmodo.

Pizza
Hut's response may be this Subconscious Menu, which has no relation to the
Jamaican Dancehall artiste Konshens but it certainly means that they’ve got
something bubbling that may come to Pizza Hut in Jamaica. Who knows, when they
launch the Subconscious Menu in Jamaica, they may have the artiste representin’
the product for them!

It
is basically a Microsoft Surface Tablet running an algorithm that control a
pair of Retina-tracking Cameras in an attachment on the base of the Tablet.

The
Tablet displays twenty (20) key Pizza toppings which the customer peruses with
the eyes not their fingers. The system, designed for Pizza Hut by Swedish
company Tobii Technology, tracks your retina gaze and calculates in less than 3
seconds which ingredients you've looks at the longest. Pizza Hut is desperate
for Change to attract Millennials (ages 18 to 28) as they’ve been experiencing
a fall in sales in the US of A as explained below!

Using
a computer program, it then chooses from Pizza Hut's 4,896 possible ingredient
combinations and then the Robot (now you can start worrying Fast Food Workers)
in the kitchen bakes the perfect Pizza to order.

Fast
Food workers, are you scared for your Jobs yet? Wait until I explain how it
actually works and how it may replace you in the Working World!

Currently
under testing, it's somewhat based on psychologist Sigmung Freud's idea of your
personality being governed by the interplay of the Id, which is always seeking
pleasure, the SuperEgo, which is your moral compass and the Ego, which is you
Conscious self that's aware of what's going on as explained in the article “The
Id, Ego and Superego - The Structural Model of Personality”, viewed
November 30th 2014 By Kendra Cherry, About
Psychology.

But
it reveals more about the inner workings of our decision making process and the
promise of how the algorithm works to the point of bordering on mind-reading
that should really fascinate you.

It
suggests that our subconscious, ruled by our Id and SuperEgo are really drawn
to nutritious “See-Food”, based on the quote from Consumer Psychologist, Dr.
Simon Moore: “We have quite an extensive subconscious relationship with our
food and it's certainly the case psychologically that 'we eat with our eyes. We
are automatically drawn to foods that give us more nutrition- it is a safety
mechanism we've inherited from primitive man that still plays a role in our
subconscious decision making, even when we might be choosing Pizza”.

Thus,
in reality, because of prior knowledge of what we eat and what our body knows
is good for us, our subconscious has already made up its mind as to what we
really want and need and not what we desire. This is often expressed by the Ego
side of our personality that has to deal with the reality of the purchasing
decision - both before and after the purchase.

That
feeling of regret after having bought something, often referred to as Buyer's
Remorse, is skipped by the Subconscious Menu, tapping instead into your
SuperEgo and Id buried deep within your Subconscious to make the decision for
you. This eye-tracking technology may help consumers make better online
shopping Decisions that they won’t regret.

The
result in a 98% rate of satisfaction according to Pizza Hut, except if you and
your friend can’t decide who's eyes, or mind for that matter, to use to choose
the Pizza. But the bigger picture here is that this tech may end up being used
not only by Pizza Hut but by Online Shopping Portals such as Amazon and even
brick-and-mortar establishments such as Grocery stores and Supermarkets to make
it easier for people to purchase items.

Instead
of shoppers wandering the Supermarket as if lost in a trance, you can instead
look at a list of images of items you want and have them chosen and bagged for
you. In and out in no time flat and you’ve shopped for what you want and need
and not what you desire, all thanks to your subconscious.

For
now, Pizza works on the Fast food Industry have much to fear; it won't be long
now before Pizza Hut realizes that they can boost sales. Robots baking Pizza
and then Drones Delivering said Pizza next......

The
price increase is mainly due to a fungal disease called Frosty Pod Rot that's
killed off a third of the world's Cocoa in West Africa. West Africa is the
major suppliers of Cocoa, the raw material for making Chocolate.

To
put it nicely, until that day that Chocolate become a luxury food, Jamaica will
make a killing if we follow Chocolatier Averell French, owner and CEO of Mount
Pleasant Chocolatiers and start processing
it into Dark Chocolate.

The
Jolla
Tablet's Indiegogo campaign, which started on Wednesday November 19th
2014 and will culminate on Tuesday December 9th, 2014 (11:59pm PT),
has already blown past the US$380,000 goal. With thirteen (13) days to go, 7,923
backers have already raised US$1,271,939 as of Thursday November 27th
2014. The Jolla
Tablet's has certainly amassed quite a following!

Sailfish
OS, the operating system that the Tablet runs on, promises not only to be Open
Source but also bake in multi-tasking and the ability to run Android apps. Developers
will love this Tablet, as the SailfishOS and be customized to their heart's
desire.

The
Jolla
Tablet's support indicates that they have a strong following, which would
reassure Developers hat choose to throw their funding dollars behind this venture
that it's got baked-in users.

Best
of all, based on the US$189 Jolla
Tablet's Specs which are comparable to the Apple iPad Mini 3, it's set to
expand beyond the confines of its 7,923 Indiegogo backers.

Still,
the specs, Price and built-in following thanks to their previous Jolla
Smartphone and now their clearly successful Indiegogo Crowdfunding run for the
US$189 Jolla
Tablet guarantees that this Tablet will be a hit, both in Finland and the
rest of the World!

It's
features made impulsive shipping by taking photographs using Firefly and
Dynamic Perspective apparently were too gimmicky for the Amazon Prime crowd and
it's so-so specs of 4.7″ IPS screen, Quad-core 2.2GHz Processor with Adreno 330
graphics, 2GB of RAM, 13MP rear-facing camera with image stabilization and an
f2.0 lens made the mainstream shun the smartphone.

Worse,
it was cursed from the start as it was launched on AT&T on a 2 year
contract for US$199.

Within
two (2) months, Amazon had to drop the price for this ordinary smartphone from
US$199 to US0.99 on 2-year Contract in 2 months.

“Fire
Sale” are the words that best describe this phenomenon. but when it became
apparent that Americans weren't feeling the smartphone when during the Amazon
Earnings Call on Thursday October 23, 2014, it was revealed that for the Third
Quarter of 2014, Amazon had US$83 million dollars worth of unsold Amazon Fire
smartphones as noted in the article “Amazon Fire
Phone Flops”, published Oct 23, 2014 by Greg Kumparak, TechCrunch.

So
as Black Friday approaches, it's clear they cannot sell off US$83 million
dollars worth of unsold Amazon Fire on AT&T alone….T-Mobile has to come to their
rescue. So expect to see the US$0.99 Amazon Fire smartphone get a software
upgrade to Google Android KitKat to capture more Amazon Prime peeps.....in the
Year of the Sheep 2015.